Gallery: The A-Z of gardening

If you're new to gardening, you're probably still working on a few basics.
You can tell a pansy from a petunia, but you still haven't quite figured out what the three numbers on the side of a bag of fertilizer stand for, or what mulch is, or what exactly people mean when they say they have been deadheading.
What you could use is a basic primer in the language of gardening, a quick guide to rudimentary garden terms like biennial and bare-root, cultivar and carpet bedding, humus and hybrids, pollarding and pricking out. So here's an easy A-to-Z of basic terms.

A for Acid Soil
Soil - perfect soil for rhododendrons, azaleas, heathers and hydrangeas - that has a pH of less than 6.5 and turns litmus paper red. Also see pH.

Also -
Aeration: A way of getting air to grassroots by poking holes into the ground. Essential for great lawns.
Alkaline soil: The opposite of acidic soil, this chalky soil has a pH of more than 7.5 and turns litmus paper blue.
Annual: Hardy and half-hardy annuals are plants that complete their life cycle in a single season, going from seed to flower or fruit before dying.